The Other Side
by Kitrinlu
Summary: Through the Veil...  Character death, obvs


Despite the danger they were in, despite the curses that were whizzing back and forth, some only narrowly missing him, despite everything, Sirius couldn't help laughing. Finally, he was doing something exciting; finally, he could fight back. The Death Eaters would regret ever going after Harry, he would see to that. And his cousin would be next...

Bellatrix shot another curse at him, the magic bolt flying past so close to his head that he could hear it sizzle. He laughed harder. Surely she didn't think she could beat him? Years of mock-duelling as children should have taught her that he would always win, one way or another.

"Come on, you can do better than that!" he taunted.

The second curse hit him squarely in the chest, and he was falling, falling, pain ricocheting through his body, his mind frozen in shock. It was only when he tried to get up, to continue the fight – he wouldn't let Bella hit him a second time, that was for sure – when he realised that he had never hit the ground.

Instead of the room in the Department of Mysteries, with his allies and enemies duelling it out to save the kids, he was surrounded by a grey, formless mist. Somehow he was standing, even though moments earlier he had been falling backwards. Falling backwards... _through the Veil_. Oh.

So this was death, he supposed. Somehow, he had expected something more... well, _more_. An endless afterlife of grey nothingness didn't seem so appealing.

He began to walk, choosing a direction at random. The scenery never changed, but at least he was doing something. Even if it was unimaginably boring.

He wasn't sure how long he had been walking – long enough to have moved on from bored, past irritable, to really quite annoyed - when out of the mists, a figure emerged. Sirius couldn't see who it was – friend or foe, he wasn't sure – but it had to be more interesting than just wandering around aimlessly.

"Hi," he called as he approached the figure, still half-hidden in the fog. "Who are you?"

"Sirius?" The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. "Sirius! It is you!"

The figure ran up to meet him through the swirling grey. Sirius felt his mouth drop open as he took in the sight of– "Regulus?"

The other man nodded. "I've been looking for you for ages! We knew you were here somewhere, of course, but it's impossible to find anyone in this mess."

"I can imagine! Wait – we?"

"Yeah, it's not like you don't have friends here, you know? James demanded to be the one to come and get you; I have no idea what Lily finally did to get him to change his mind. And even Mother and Father would like to see you. Things are pretty different here, you know. Somehow, what seemed important before often isn't once you get a bit of perspective."

Sirius blinked, trying to take it all in. "So you're here to – what, take me to where everyone else is? And then what? Do we hang out on clouds and play harps or something? And since when did we ever have a polite conversation without you calling me a muggle-lover or me breaking your stuff?"

Regulus looked abashed. "About that... I wanted to see you first, before the others, so that I could apologise. I said some awful things to you, y'know, before, and I would have done a lot of things differently if I'd known."

"Wow, what happened to you? Do you have to be an angel to get into the good bits of Heaven after all?"

Regulus chuckled. "It's not like that. 'The good bits' are open to everyone – I'll take you there in a minute. It's just that, after you left home, I eventually did some growing up. I regret a lot of the things I did back then, and I wanted to tell you so. I was young, and stupid, and very, very wrong."

"Yeah, well..." Sirius wasn't sure what to say. It had been so long, and so much had happened. "It wasn't all your fault," he said finally, and realised as he said it that it was the truth. "I wasn't exactly a little angel back then, either. You were the favourite and we both knew it, and I made sure I made you miserable because of it. And wiser wizards than you have been led astray by Voldemort. Why don't we just, I don't know, call it even?"

"Start over, maybe?" Regulus suggested. "It would be nice to have an older brother again."

Sirius smiled. "Alright, you're on. Remember, though, one of the duties of an older brother is to make sure the younger one doesn't get too full of himself. Now, where's James? I bet he's got some great ideas to liven things up a bit."

Regulus grinned. "Yeah, well, one of the duties of a younger brother is to make sure the older one doesn't get too complacent. And James isn't the only one with good ideas. Come on!"

He led the way off into the mists, and Sirius followed. He had no idea where they were going, or what would happen when they got there, but he couldn't wait to find out.


End file.
